ONLINE CHATTER >>>

Yesterday's comment of the day came from Chris Van Vechten — Rule 9 Municipal Prosecutor (criminal) at the city of Lakewood — in response to Aaron T. Sherman's op-ed "Online translations vital for equity in Tacoma Public Schools" posted on the Weekly Volcano's new political and policy blog, Town Hall Tourist.

Van Vechten writes,

I really think you should compare the technology in Tacoma's Public Schools to our Private Universities (UPS & PLU). I can't speak to PLU, but UPS is way behind TPS and has been for quite some time.......Students with non-English speaking parents overwhelmingly lack access to the internet and tech skills. We still don't have universal internet, and the poorer you are, the less likely you are to have access to these technologies. These are problems bigger than the school district, requires Federal Intervention. I've long thought this is something where the GOP and Dems could work together on if they were willing to ignore some people. If I were in charge, I would completely defund the US post office, and use the revenue currently going to that service to provide every family in America with a laptop, wireless internet, a fax-machine, printer and scanner. We'd bring every household in America online, we'd reduce needless energy costs by communicating exclusively via email and online billing/banking, and we'd preserve resources likes fuel and paper. The post office mostly exists today to provide junk mail and credit card applications to people with zero credit. It's employees have expensive benefits. It's been an amazing service to the country, but it's use is no longer obvious. We could do more by providing universal internet access to America, and allow package delivery to be conducted by a number of private competing delivery companies.